By the time the next year rolled around, we had moved into a house nicknamed the "Hooch Pit" with Brad Steinbacher and two mad geniuses by the names of Matt Cook (original editor of The Stranger) and Todd Davis (a man who can make American history sound like gossip out of Us Weekly). We continued our newfound Christmas tradition, this time by taking a hat rack that was drunkenly garbage picked and a bicycle, and stringing them with lights. We built a fort around it on Christmas Eve, drank eggnog, and woke the next morning to presents and good cheer.
There are plenty of Christmas traditions, both old and new, floating around Seattle. The Grand Illusion continues its wonderful decades-long run of It's a Wonderful Life starting on Friday, December 17, and on Tuesday, December 21, they're hosting their holiday party around it. They're also experimenting with a new tradition by showing Terry Zwigoff's drunken holiday film Bad Santa as a late-night show on Friday and Saturday.
The Northwest Film Forum is hosting its own holiday party on Monday, December 20, after a screening of The Awful Truth. They're serious about the party, too. Though it's free for members and $7.50 for nonmembers, the cost is $30 for anyone NOT in holiday dress. Along with a few metrosexuals in attendance, there will also be a performance by the band the Silver Bells.
Meanwhile, the NWFF will also be showing their own nasty late-night Christmas film when they show Christmas Evil (AKA You Better Watch Out) on Friday and Saturday. That, of course, is the story of a boy who grows up to be a Santa-obsessed loner who will do anything to protect the holiday from the cynical world after seeing his mom felt up by Santa when he was a boy. Director Lewis Jackson will be in attendance. The movie is described as "the best of the 'Santa serial killer' genre" by The Scarecrow Movie Guide, a new book put out by our own Scarecrow Video--which is also a perfect Christmas gift.